The European Project, Federalism and Evaluation

Abstract

The US federalist system has been at the origin of evaluation in many ways: providing a laboratory for experimentation of innovative policies, and requiring evaluation of the growing federal intervention from the War on Poverty onwards. Evaluation approaches have been developed that took into consideration the multiple forms of collaboration activated by the federalist system.This experience offers a benchmark for considering evaluation of EU policies and programmes, as it has been elicited by the complex system of EU governance, encompassing both federalist trends — towards concentration of powers at the centre and towards autonomy at the lower levels. First, the article analyses the effects of the centralistic administrative culture of the EU on the way evaluations are conducted at the different levels. Second, it focuses on how the European value added is assessed in the evaluation of two main mechanisms of EU governance that imply a partnership between different jurisdictions: the Structural Funds programmes and the Open Method of Coordination.To do this, it discusses a growing literature of evaluations that utilize theories of power relations, from multilevel governance and network to principal—agent.

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